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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27228799">The Samhain Swindle</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxOnPie/pseuds/FoxOnPie'>FoxOnPie</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Parliament of Owls [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV), The Owl House (Cartoon)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV) References, Canon Compliant, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, F/F, Fluff and Crack, Halloween, Inspired by Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:53:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>10,183</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27228799</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/FoxOnPie/pseuds/FoxOnPie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Samhain Festival has arrived, and while most witches are celebrating a plentiful harvest and a lack of being devoured by monsters, two sisters are competing in an ultimately petty contest to see who's the smartest between the two of them. A Brooklyn Nine-Nine style story where Eda and Lilith compete for the title of Ultimate Witch/Genius.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Amity Blight/Luz Noceda</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>A Parliament of Owls [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1988263</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>38</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>62</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. The Swindle Starts</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    
<p></p><div><p>If there was any holiday that truly united witches all across the Boiling Isles, it was none other than the great Samhain Festival. One of the few traditions of the Savage Ages that weren't eliminated from the Boiling Isles when Emperor Belos took over, the Samhain Festival was when all the witches got together to celebrate a fruitful harvest, one that produced plenty of food and only had a small number of the population devoured by Promethean bobbitt worms. It was a time of celebration, a time of merriment, and more importantly, it was a time for family.</p><p>For Lilith Clawthorne, it would be the most important Samhain Festival in decades, for it would be the first one she would be celebrating with her sister since they were separated by the consequences of Lilith's envy and hubris. Ideally, she would have preferred it if they could have gotten back to that point without the truth of her actions being revealed and Eda and herself losing the ability to use magic like normal witches, but she deserved it, and she had long since accepted that it was an appropriate sacrifice for being able to have a relationship with Eda again. Not only did she have that again, but she even had a whole new family in the colorful cast of outcasts and misfits who called the Owl House home; it was still an odd sensation to put herself among them, but it was what it was.</p><p>"Come on, Luz, we don't have all day!" Eda said, yelling at the shut door to Luz's room.</p><p>"I feel stupid, though," Luz said from behind the door.</p><p>"Stupider than when you were wearing that vampireface getup you walked in with?" King asked.</p><p>"You all said this holiday was like Halloween, so sorry if I thought dressing up as a monster—sorry, a demonic individual—was okay! I mean, what kind of fun can you have just by dressing up like humans, anyway?"</p><p>"Well, what kind of fun can you have just by dressing up like the demonically inclined?" Lilith asked, not bothering to get up from the couch to talk to her for reasons beyond the couch being her bed for the last several months. Luz let out a groan in response. Lilith didn't understand what was so hard to understand about it all. A proud tradition of the Samhain Festival was children dressing up in costumes for their own amusement, and since humans were the most mysterious of creatures to witches, of course, they dressed up like them.</p><p>"Luz, you're going to look fine, and we're going to have a great time at the dance, but that can't happen until you come out." Even Amity had gotten into the spirit as she waved around a wooden bat while wearing her old Grudgby facepaint and some white-colored, unisex athletic wear with her name on the back and a backwards cap on her head; Lilith believed that it was the uniform for a human sport called "luge". It would have been hard to imagine the Amity of just a few months ago dressing up as a loogie, or whatever the right terminology was, but Lilith wasn't the only person who had been changed by Luz and the rest of the people of the Owl House. Although, it was easy to imagine why Luz, specifically, would have had such an influence on Amity.</p><p>"Okay, okay, I'm coming out." The door swung open, and out stepped Luz in her human costume. Luz was holding a briefcase in one hand, her hair was slicked back like in the Grom pictures Amity accidentally forwarded to her, and she was wearing heels and a gray skirt on her lower half and, on her top half, a white shirt with suspenders and a purple tie with pictures of a cat skull patterned across it. "Well, do I look especially boring?"</p><p>"I wouldn't be caught dead with you, so it's a winner for me," Eda said. Lilith could see Amity nodding enthusiastically at the sight of Luz and just sighed with resignation.</p><p>"Yep. Came in dressed like a vampire, and now I'm a lawyer or something. I can make it work, though." Lilith rolled her eyes as Luz gave her best impression of an adult woman and said, "'Your honor, my opponent is badgering the witness, and I would like to request that you make him stop.' Ugh, I wanna punch myself in the face. I'm just gonna go in my street clothes."</p><p>"Don't. You. Dare," Amity said, pointing her luge bat at Luz while wearing the kind of smile that said things she didn't know she was fully comfortable with.</p><p>"Right, I forget boring stuff works on you. Okay, um," With a wider smile on her face, Luz did her impression again and said, "'I know that a surprise witness is highly unorthodox, but he is a credible source for proving my client's innocence, and as this state has no official law prohibiting a surprise witness, his testimony should be allowed to stand.'"</p><p>"You bet it should." Amity sounded uncomfortably delighted when she said that.</p><p>"'I object to that last remark, and I ask you, good people of the jury, to not fall for my opponent's words. They are nothing but pure, unadulterated, chicanery.'" It took Luz a few seconds to say that last word, almost as if it took her a while to come up with the word. Regardless, Amity dropped her luge bat while whispering something along the lines of "Oh, mama" and picked it back up with a face dyed crimson. The only solace Lilith could take in it all was that Eda and King seemed annoyed by the whole exchange, as well.</p><p>"You seemed smarter than this when I met you," Lilith said.</p><p>"Thank you," Amity said, spontaneously regaining her composure. "So, Luz, still feel stupid?"</p><p>"Not any more than usual, but hey, who am I to go against tradition, right? The ones that have a chance to be fun, anyway," Luz said. "Speaking of which, what kind of stuff do adults and demons do for the Samhain Festival?"</p><p>"Try to amass an army of the damned," King said.</p><p>"Get drunk off apple blood to forget my troubles," Eda said.</p><p>"Don't you two do that every day, though?" Amity asked.</p><p>"That wasn't the question." Lilith would have said something about it if her new status quo didn't make her see the benefits in that kind of activity.</p><p>"What about you, Lilith? You have any Samhain traditions? I know you've basically been by yourself since you joined the Emperor's Coven, so did you do anything with them?" Lilith was doing her best to stay as uninvolved with the conversation as possible, but the question Luz asked of her was one that actually made her remember something good about her past life. It even inspired her to stand up from the couch for the first time in three days.</p><p>"Well, since you're asking about it, the Emperor's Coven did have a little tradition for the holiday called the Samhain Swindle," Lilith said. "Every year, we would take a relic out of evidence and put it on display in the middle of the office where everyone could see, and everyone who was on duty would try and do whatever they could to steal it. Whoever managed to hold onto it until midnight would win a week's paid vacation and a trophy that says 'Ultimate Witch/Genius'; I voted against the trophy, but the majority out ruled me on that."</p><p>"Wow, that sounds like a ton of fun!" Amity rolled her eyes at that, for whatever reason.</p><p>"Yes, it was fun, wasn't it? Working in the Emperor's Coven was nothing but paperwork and chasing down criminals who didn't deserve it three times out of ten, but I guess that was something about being there that was actually fun, even in hindsight." A part of her wanted to say that it made her miss being in the Emperor's Coven, but that seemed like it was better left unsaid.</p><p>"How fun could it have been to always lose, though?" Eda asked, the question replacing all feelings of nostalgia with feelings of annoyance.</p><p>"Excuse me? What did you just say, Edalyn?"</p><p>"Don't act like you didn't hear me. How much fun could someone like you have possibly had with something like that when you'd only ever lose year after year?"</p><p>"I'll have you know, Edalyn, that I won every single year I was able to participate." There were a few seconds of silence before Eda started laughing uncontrollably. "It's true! Tell her, Amity!"</p><p>"She's not lying. Lilith always won the Swindle whenever she was free to compete. Not that I have any personal experience with that, since she never let me participate," Amity said. Luz patted her on the back, for whatever reason, but Lilith wouldn't have cared, even if she wasn't in the middle of being mad at Eda.</p><p>"I feel like that says more about the Emperor's Coven than it does about you," King said.</p><p>"No, it says a lot about me, in particular that I am a brilliant mastermind," Lilith said.</p><p>"Sure you are, Lily. Sure you are," Eda said, bits of laughter still peppering her speech here and there. "If you're such a brilliant mastermind, then where was all of that for the twenty-plus whatever years you failed to take me in, huh?"</p><p>"I-It's always been there! It's just that the kind of skills needed for the Swindle are different from the kind of skills needed for taking in people like you!"</p><p>"So they're ineffective and pointless, then? Got it."</p><p>"Our moms are fighting. What do we do?" Luz whispered to Amity. Amity whispered something inaudible, and Lilith did her best to ignore it.</p><p>"But you know what, Lily? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe you winning all those times that you did shows some real skill on your part. However, it doesn't change the fact that if you were competing with someone just as good as you, if not better, then you'd lose every single time."</p><p>"And when you say that, you mean yourself, yes?"</p><p>"Bingpot. Even without my regular magic, I bet I could out-Swindle you any day of the week."</p><p>"Isn't this the only day where that would matter, though?" King asked.</p><p>"Incorrect, King," Lilith said. "It will matter every single day for the next year as I continually mock Edalyn for her failure to defeat me and for handing me undeniable proof that I am the supreme Swindler!"</p><p>"Oh, I guess it's on, then!" It was, indeed, on. It was more on that Eda could possibly imagine.</p><p>"This sounds like fun. Can I get in on it?" Luz asked.</p><p>"Nope. Just go swap spit at your dance, kid."</p><p>"I can do that anytime, though. Please? This sounds like it's going to be <em>really </em>fun."</p><p>"Yes, it will be fun when I tear Lily a new one, but this is just between the two of us, so go do something else."</p><p>"Fine." Luz let out a dejected sigh as her shoulders fell into a slump.</p><p>"Don't make a big thing out of this, Luz," Lilith said. "I never let Amity join in on the Swindle, and she's always been fine with that. Right, Amity?"</p><p>"We're going to the dance, now. Bye," Amity said, pulling Luz out of the Owl House by her wrist. Odd that she didn't answer her question, but there were bigger things to worry about now, like where she would display whatever they'd use as a trophy after defeating Eda.</p><p>"Do I have to leave, too? I kind of want to see you two try and destroy each other," King said.</p><p>"Yeah, stay. It'll be nice to have a witness for Lily's slaughter," Eda said.</p><p>"But not as nice as it'll be to have someone watch me reduce Edalyn to the pile of filth that she is," Lilith said.</p><p>With that all being said, the Samhain Swindle was on.</p>
<hr/><p>
    <strong>A short story that combines two of my newest obsessions into one. Enjoy the ride.</strong>
  </p></div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. The Swindle Sustains</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div>
  <p>"Okay, let's get this started. The sooner we lay down the rules, the sooner I get to gloat over Lily," Eda said. She, Lilith, and King were all standing outside the Owl House, and Lilith was giving that same look of overconfidence she always had when they were about to get into something, the look she wore when she thought her victory was assured. Breaking it would be especially fun this time around. "According to Lily, the way this whole Swindle thing works is that a relic is put out in the open somewhere and everyone tries to steal it. Don't have anything fancy lying around here, but this seems like a good thing for us to use." Eda reached into her hair and pulled out what she had chosen as the objective of the Swindle</p>
  <p>"The Grudgby ball from our last championship match," Lilith said.</p>
  <p>"Yep. Had to bounce it off of Odalia's big nose to score the winning goal. Look, you can still see some of her blood."</p>
  <p>"Her nose was <em>not </em>that big, Edalyn."</p>
  <p>"Yeah, I guess smacking her in the face did take a few inches off of it." Lilith was fuming the way she always did when Eda teased her about Odalia, and it was still fun to watch like always, though Eda didn't know how she felt about that still working after so many years. "Anyway, this is the most valuable thing in the house that the both of us care about, so this is what we're gonna try and steal. As for where we have to steal it from? Hooty!"</p>
  <p>"Yyyyyeeess?" Hooty asked as he stretched out of the door. For some reason, he had a pair of novelty mouse ears taped to his head.</p>
  <p>"Here. Play with this." Eda tossed the ball to Hooty, who then proceeded to bounce it off of his head and roll it across its elongated body.</p>
  <p>"Yeesh. Way to ruin a perfectly good blood ball, Eda," King said.</p>
  <p>"Oh, boy! I am <em>all </em>about this! I could do this forever, hoot!" Hooty said, wrapping the ball around his slimy body.</p>
  <p>"You have until midnight. No matter what, do what you can to keep Lily and me from taking that ball, but you can't do anything if we actually do manage to take it," Eda said.</p>
  <p>"Can do!"</p>
  <p>"Any complaints on your end?"</p>
  <p>"Only that you think me to be a fool, Edalyn," Lilith said. "I'll admit that the idea of having to wrestle the Grudgby ball away from this disgusting creature is less than ideal, but it is hardly the deterrent you planned for it to be. If anything, the fact that victory will be attained by wrestling it out of the grasp of something like this will make it all the more sweet and savory upon my tongue."</p>
  <p>"And all this bragging you're doing will just make you all the more salty and bitter when I win. Exactly what I'm going for."</p>
  <p>"I don't know what any of this is, but I'm just happy to be included!" Hooty said.</p>
  <p>"And with that, it's Swindle time!" King said.</p>
  <p>"Hey! You don't get a say in this, King," Eda said. "But yes, it is Swindle time. I'd say we have a little over five hours until midnight, so until then, may the better swindler, which is me, win, which is what I'm going to do."</p>
  <p>"You wish. I've lived here for a few months now, so I believe I know all the strengths and weaknesses of this beast. Plucking the Grudgby ball from him should be as easy as plucking a petal from—"</p>
  <p>The second Lilith tried to take the Grudgby ball from Hooty, Hooty hissed at Lilith and headbutted her into a tree.</p>
  <p>"Saw that coming from a mile away," King said.</p>
  <p>"This is all according to plan, mind you," Lilith said, dusting herself off and approaching Hooty once more. "I needed to get hit to confirm the scope of his abilities. Now that I have, I am more than free to—" Hooty slammed Lilith so hard into the ground that she left an imprint in the dirt.</p>
  <p>"Well, have fun with that, I guess. Me? I'm going inside," Eda said. "There's a bottle of apple blood that still has a cork in it, and it would just be a shame to leave it like that all night." With a mocking stretch, Eda went back inside the Owl House, King following closely behind her, and the door was shut just as Lilith was smacked by Hooty a third time.</p>
  <p>"You know, as incompetent as Lilith might be, you still need to figure out a way around Hooty, yourself," King said.</p>
  <p>"Please, I got that covered. Now, then," Eda reached into her hair and pulled out a bag of chocolates, "go have fun with this, why dontcha?"</p>
  <p>"Don't mind if I do!" King took the chocolate right out of her hands and ran over to the couch. He'd probably spend the whole night like that if left alone, munching away as he remained as blissfully unaware about everything as Lilith. Lilith, who was probably asking herself the same question King just asked her about what Eda's plan for dealing with Hooty was. The answer to that, of course, was a simple one: she wasn't going to deal with him at all because she didn't need to deal with him.</p>
  <p>And she didn't need to deal with him because the championship Grudgby ball was with her the entire time.</p>
  <p><em>Oh, Lily, you naive little idiot. So caught up in your supposed victory that you didn't even bother to inspect the ball</em>, Eda thought. <em>What Hooty has with him is nothing but a convincing fake I prepared when no one was looking. Meanwhile, the real championship Grudgby ball never left my side, and it's going to stay at my side until midnight when I will be crowned supreme swindler, or whatever we're using for this thing. I forget, but the point is that you lost before this even started.</em></p>
  <p>Eda took a long sip of apple blood straight from the bottle. The kind of sip that only true winners took when they had a glow of victory to bask in. It was sweet.</p>
  <hr/>
  <p>An hour into the Swindle and everything was still going according to plan. Eda had retired to her room and Lilith was still making foolhardy attempts to steal the fake Grudgby ball from Hooty, completely unaware that the real one never left Eda's side. The only things to happen that were even slightly interesting were King running outside to conscript a firefly into his army before it spontaneously combusted and Luz posting a picture to Amity's Penstagram account of the two of them at the dance with a caption about the fireworks going off soon.</p>
  <p>"Oh yeah, people do fireworks at this thing. Wonder if Lily wants to check some out," Eda said. As if on some sort of cue, Lilith was thrown into her room through an open window, her face slamming right into a wall. "Hey, you wanna go check out some fireworks?"</p>
  <p>"Fireworks, Edalyn? Don't patronize with something as ridiculous as that," Lilith said, dusting herself off. "And don't get <em>too </em>comfortable here. I'm going to work my way around that monster eventually, you know."</p>
  <p>"No, you're not!" Hooty shouted out of sight.</p>
  <p>"Yes, I am!"</p>
  <p>"Nope." Lilith let out a growl and stomped out of the room in frustration. Eda laughed; it was almost too easy, when she really thought about it. With how much Lilith had been boasting, she had hoped for a semblance of a challenge, but it appeared that that was too much to ask for.</p>
  <p>As the thought left her head, an explosion sounded off that nearly surprised her enough to send her head clean off her body; it didn't, but it did knock her out of her bed with how loud and sudden it was.</p>
  <p>"What the hell was that?" Eda asked no one as she picked herself up. "Not being burnt to smithereens, so it wasn't a bombing. Probably one of those fireworks. Have they always been so close to here? I oughta fly over and teach them what happens when you mess around on someone else's property that they technically don't own." Eda picked her staff up off the floor and got ready to fly out, but she stopped herself when a single question came to mind.</p>
  <p>Her staff was supposed to be in her hair, so what was it doing on the floor?</p>
  <p><em>I must have hit the ground harder than I thought and knocked a bunch of crap loose</em>, Eda thought. <em>Wait, if my staff fell out, then that could mean— </em>Eda dug a hand through her hair and quickly confirmed that the Grudgby ball was, indeed, no longer in her hair. That was certainly annoying, but it was a simple matter of just picking it back up and returning it to its rightful home.</p>
  <p>"The ball is gone!" Something like that would be an obvious obstacle, of course, and it was the obstacle Eda was facing after five minutes of fruitless searching. "The ball is gone! There are no balls to be found here, title of Lily's sex tape, but where is it? How could it just—" A gleam from the windowsill made its way into Eda's eyes. She stepped to the side to better walk over to it and get a look at the offending object, discovering it to be a glimmering white feather. The kind of feather that only belonged to one bird that she knew of.</p>
  <p>"Crowley." It appeared that Eda had the challenge she was looking for, and she wasn't happy about it, in the slightest.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. The Swindle Snafus</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div>
  <p>After getting assaulted by Hooty for what felt like the hundredth time, Lilith decided to take a break and lie down on the couch. The couch had served her well as a place for her to try and forget her troubles, and there was no reason for tonight to be any different, especially with all that she had been through up until then.</p>
  <p>"Lilith!" Unfortunately, there was one form of trouble that not even the couch could save her from, and it came barrelling toward her in a barely sober jaunt.</p>
  <p>"Edalyn, I'm tired, and I don't have the energy to deal with more of your taunting. Come back in an hour, or something," Lilith said.</p>
  <p>"First of all, you don't get to tell me when I can and can't bother you, you coucher, you," Eda said, the comment stinging a surprising amount. "More importantly, you don't get to act all innocent as you sit there with whatever master plan you've cooked up underway."</p>
  <p>"I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about." Eda then put a white feather in front of Lilith's face as if it were meant to signify some sort of big reveal. "I'm going to slap you if you try and tickle my nose with that."</p>
  <p>"Still playing dumb, are we? We both know that this is one of Crowley's feathers, so you want to tell me what it was doing in <em>my</em> room?"</p>
  <p>"Your guess is as good as mine because Crowley has been down here all night." Lilith pointed behind the couch to where her staff was situated atop a pile of dirty laundry and empty noodle containers.</p>
  <p>"Yeah, he's there now, but we both know he's fast enough to have flown from my room to back down here without getting seen." Lilith, much to her own annoyance, sat up at that.</p>
  <p>"Interesting choice of words there, Edalyn. 'Without getting seen'. Now, if Crowley did go into your room, why would he do it in a way that ensured that he wouldn't be seen? The only reason I could imagine is if you're accusing Crowley of stealing from you, and as much as he likes shiny things, he knows better than to pick through your stash. What do you think he stole from you, then?" Eda just stood there stammering nonsense, and with each stammer, Lilith smiled a little wider.</p>
  <p>"I don't need to take this from you, you know! This is my house, so if I say your bird stole something from me, then I don't have to say what it is, nor do I have to provide proof of any kind!"</p>
  <p>"Edalyn, you're drunk."</p>
  <p>"That's beside the point!" Eda attempted to throw the feather at her, only for her to stumble about and nearly fall over.</p>
  <p>"Well, if I'm not mistaken, there are about three-and-a-half hours left in the Swindle. I am heavily bruised, so I'm going to take a little break, but feel free to take advantage of that to make your move. You probably should get started on something pretty soon. After all, it's not like either of us has the ball, right?"</p>
  <p>"Oh, you'd like that, wouldn't you?" Eda asked, shooting her a glare. After a few seconds of that, Eda stomped outside and slammed the door behind her. Lilith heard a hiss from Hooty and the sound of shattering wood, so it seemed that she made a go for the Grudgby ball, only for Hooty to smack her into a tree.</p>
  <p>"Worked like a charm," Lilith said. At her cue, Crowley, who had only been pretending to be in his locked state, hopped off of the staff and flew up to Lilith's side, upon which she presented him with a reward of a back scratch and the shiny spoon she used for her last three cereal dinners. As Crowley played with that, Eda stepped off the couch and made her way to the pile of dirty clothes and empty noodle containers behind the couch.</p>
  <p>After fishing through that for a bit, she was able to hold the championship Grudgby ball again for the sake of basking in her own excellence.</p>
  <p><em>Very clever of you to never give Hooty the real ball, Edalyn</em>, Lilith thought. <em>You even kept me from inspecting it by distracting me with nostalgic thoughts of Odalia, but that only lasted so long. After that, it only took a negligible amount of external bleeding on my part to realize that the ball in Hooty's possession didn't have a real bloodstain on it, meaning that the true championship Grudgby ball was with you all along. I faked about half of my failed attempts to keep your guard down, and after those fireworks rattled you like I knew they would, it was the perfect chance to strike. </em>Lilith took a note to thank King in her victory speech at midnight. After all, as odd a thing as it was, if it wasn't for him telling her that people were going to be lighting fireworks nearby, she never would have been able to concoct her masterstroke.</p>
  <p><em>The best part about it all was that I was able to force you to grapple with that monster in order to maintain your illusion, lest your treachery be exposed and the integrity of the Swindle be thrown into jeopardy. By the time you think you've done enough, you'll probably be too tired to challenge me any further. </em>Lilith let out a laugh as she spun the Grudgby ball around. <em>You truly underestimated me, Edalyn. When I said that a Swindle required certain skills, I meant it, and now we're seeing what happens when a rank amateur tries to challenge a seasoned master like myself: complete and utter humiliation on the part of the amateur!</em></p>
  <p>Lilith let out a laugh as she stored the Grudgby ball away once more, and with any luck, it would simply be the first of a long string of laughter she would be able to execute at Eda's expense.</p>
  <p>There was a first time for everything, and the first time of that would surely be sweet.</p>
  <hr/>
  <p>Time ticked onwards, and soon enough, there were only a little over two hours left in the Swindle. Eda stopped going after Hooty after a while and retired to her room to recover from her wounds, and Lilith ended up following suit in order to do her share of maintaining the illusion. She might have done that a little too well, of course, as evidenced by how hard a time she was having trying to get up from the couch.</p>
  <p>"You know what? Swindles are dumb," King said, licking chocolate from the bottom of a plastic bag. "I mean, as fun as it is to watch you and Eda get smacked around by Hooty, I was kinda hoping to see you two smack around each other a bit."</p>
  <p>"Yes, well, life isn't about the things we want to see happen," Lilith said.</p>
  <p>"God, you're boring. When's someone gonna do something interesting around here?" When Lilith ignored King, King threw his empty bag to the floor and stormed out of the house in a huff. The Swindle was hers, so he could do what he wanted. The only thing she was obligated to do was wait out the clock for her victory to be assured, and she was more than happy to do that.</p>
  <p>"Oh, no!" Interrupting that process was the sound of Hooty screaming and being pummeled by someone or something. In an instinctual panic, Lilith grabbed her staff and ran outside to inspect the situation, and sure enough, Hooty's elongated form was sprawled out across the ground covered in dirt and patches of an odd goo she couldn't completely identify.</p>
  <p>"What happened, Hooty? Is the Emperor's Coven attacking?" Lilith asked.</p>
  <p>"I don't know! Someone just came out of nowhere and sucker-punched me, hoot!" Hooty said.</p>
  <p>"It had to be the Emperor's Coven, then. Only people as elite and competent as the witches who make up their incredibly powerful forces could have done this." All of that was something Lilith wholeheartedly believed. "Okay, first things first, have to call Luz and tell her to spend the night with Amity, not that she'd be particularly upset about that, and then Edalyn and I have to—"</p>
  <p>"And the worst part is that they popped my ball!" Hooty twisted his body around to show the deflated Grudgby ball underneath him. "I'll never be happy again! Never, never, never—Look, ants! I'm gonna eat them!" Hooty then proceeded to do just that.</p>
  <p>"Who cares about that, Hooty? There are more important things going on than a worthless—That conniving harlot!"</p>
  <p>"Who, me?" Lilith ignored Hooty and ran back inside the Owl House. If what she was thinking was true, then she needed to hurry back to safeguard what was rightfully hers before it was too late, and she needed to do it with the kind of poise and precision a multi-time Swindle winner like herself was expected to exhibit.</p>
  <p>Unfortunately, tripping over the hem of her dress and falling face-first into her dirty laundry didn't help much in that regard. Still, it did allow for Lilith to dig through it all rather quickly, and after rifling through dirty socks and leftover pieces of noodle, her worst fear was realized: the Grudgby ball was gone.</p>
  <p>"Once again: Edalyn, you conniving harlot."</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0004"><h2>4. The Swindle Spirals</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p></p><div>
  <p>"The jig is up, Edalyn, you conniving harlot!" That was what Eda heard when Lilith barged into her room all of a sudden; she heard it three times because Lilith tried to kick her door open, only to fail miserably twice.</p>
  <p>"Do you know that you have a bra hanging off your ear and some carrots on your nose?" Eda asked while sprawled out across her nest.</p>
  <p>"I don't need you to tell me that." Despite that, Lilith still made an effort to brush it all off. "What I do need you to tell me is what you did with my championship Grudgby ball!"</p>
  <p>"<em>Your </em>championship Grudgby ball? Even if I wasn't the one who scored the winning goal, and I was, last I checked, neither one of us had managed to take it from Hooty yet."</p>
  <p>"Enough with the act, Edalyn. We both know that I took the ball and hid it away after taking it from you, who had it from the very second this Swindle started!"</p>
  <p>"You know you're supposed to pretend like you don't know anything about that, right?"</p>
  <p>"We both know I don't have the patience to do that twice in one evening! More importantly, I demand to know what you've done with my rightful prize!" That was when Eda finally willed herself to sit up.</p>
  <p>"Okay, even if I did take the ball back from you, why in the world would I tell you where I put it?" Lilith stared at Eda looking completely dumbfounded, and in an ideal world, Eda would have said that it surprised her.</p>
  <p>"Th-The point is that playtime is over! You've pushed me too far with that last trick, making me think that we were under attack, and now you shall feel all of my unbridled deductive powers! Prepare yourself for the ultimate reckoning!"</p>
  <p>"I'm shaking in my boots with anticipation."</p>
  <p>"Anticipation, and <em>fear</em>!" Lilith glared at Eda and almost gave off the impression that she had something devious up her sleeves, but Eda knew better than to expect anything of the sort from her sister. Sure enough, she was proven right about not overestimating her when Lilith's unbridled deductive powers turned out to just be her digging around through her closet for the Grudgby ball.</p>
  <p>"Feel free to color-coordinate my socks while you're at it," Eda said as she stepped out onto her balcony.</p>
  <p>"If I do that, it's because <em>I</em> want to, not because you told me to do it!" Lilith said, still making an even bigger mess of Eda's things. Lilith appeared to be fully distracted, so Eda pulled her staff out of her hair and flew down to the base of the Owl House. Then, after taking another look around to make sure that the coast was clear, she whistled out and signaled for her partner in crime to come to her with her rightful prize.</p>
  <p>"Good boy, King," Eda said as King ran over on all fours with the Grudgby ball in tow. "Could have done without the slobber, but a win's a win, I guess."</p>
  <p>As Eda took the Grudgby ball from King, she took a moment to laugh to herself about Lilith's stupidity. Credit where credit was due, it was clever of Lilith to use Crowley to take the Grudgby ball and then force her into a situation where she needed to go out of her way to perpetuate the illusion of a fair game, but she got too ahead of herself and didn't even bother to take precautions to defend herself; something that reckless was an Eda move, and only Eda had what it took to pull off something like that. As such, it was easy for her to conscript King into keeping an eye on Lilith for her with a bribe of additional chocolate. All he had to do was take the Grudgby ball from her the second he had the chance and wait for her signal, and that chance came about when she left to investigate the weird stuff with Hooty she said she was responsible for, for some reason. Eda still didn't get it, but the big takeaway was that she had the Grudgby and was on her way to victory, meaning all was right with the world.</p>
  <p>"Wait a minute." As it turned out, all was not right in the world, as evidenced by the lack of nose blood on the Grudgby ball King gave her. "This isn't the championship Grudgby ball. This is just some <em>common</em> Grudgby ball! King, what are doing bringing me—"</p>
  <p>King's skull fell onto the ground, revealing it to just be a mask for an otherwise normal dog, which definitely shouldn't have been the case for King.</p>
  <p>"Hey, you're not King. You're just some <em>common</em> bitch!" Said common bitch barked at her without a care in the world, as common bitches were known to do. "I guess I have to give Lily a little more credit than I thought I did. Never expected her to go so low as taking King right from under my nose; a move right out of my own playbook. If I'm going to counter this, I'll have to match her with a move out of her playbook and actually put some thought into my next move."</p>
  <hr/>
  <p>The move Eda came up with after putting thought into her actions amounted to tackling Lilith in the hallway and demanding that she hand over both the Grudgby ball and King, most likely in that order; it was briefly interrupted when the two of them fell down the stairs, but it quickly continued right after that, with neither of them making much progress against each other. The two only stopped tussling with one another when Luz entered the Owl House with a cheery "Hello!" and Amity asked what they were doing; Eda and Lilith stopped fighting and stood back up, with Eda getting one last punch in because of course, she did.</p>
  <p>"Wait, this is still going on?" Luz asked.</p>
  <p>"Little under an hour left in the day, so of course it is, and that's just <em>great</em>," Amity said.</p>
  <p>"No, it is not great, Amity, because Edalyn is stubbornly denying me my victory with her lies!" Lilith said.</p>
  <p>"You're the liar, liar!" Eda said. "You're lying about what you did with the Grudgby ball, and almost as importantly, you're lying about what you did with King!"</p>
  <p>"Wait, what? What happened with King?" Luz asked.</p>
  <p>"Nothing. He's right there," Amity said, pointing to the dog dressed as King who, for some reason, had gotten into the house and sat down near Eda.</p>
  <p>"<em>This bitch</em>? Please," Eda said. "Watch." Eda bent down to the dog's level and asked for its paw, a command it was happy to comply with. She then told it to roll over, and after a few seconds, it did just that. "See? This thing's <em>way </em>smarter than King, which is why I'm not surprised that Lily was able to take him when she was taking the Grudgby ball."</p>
  <p>"Again, I did nothing of the sort. Stop trying to gaslight us all to hide the fact that <em>you </em>have stolen the championship Grudgby ball," Lilith said, making Eda want to smack her in the teeth. "I mean, first you fake an attack from the Emperor's Coven, then it's this nonsense with King, and now—"</p>
  <p>"Wait wait wait, back up a sec," Luz interjected. "The Emperor's Coven attacked? Why didn't you call us?"</p>
  <p>"Because it wasn't a <em>real</em> attack. Just something Lily faked in a convoluted scheme to try and lower my guard," Eda said.</p>
  <p>"No, that's what <em>you </em>did!" Lilith said.</p>
  <p>"Okay, I'm getting <em>real </em>tired of all this—"</p>
  <p>"Hey!" Amity shouted, swinging her luge bat between the both of them. "If both of you think that the other person did it and is lying when they said they didn't, did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, it could be a real attack?"</p>
  <p>"Yeah, sure. And why would they be doing that?"</p>
  <p>"I don't know, maybe they figured that their highly competitive ex-leader would be doing her own Swindle with her equally competitive sister and are waiting for you both to tire yourselves out before going for the metaphorical kill?" Eda was ready to laugh it all off, but instead, she found her eyes widening with disbelief, and she could see Lilith's doing the same.</p>
  <p>""Shit,"" they both said together.</p>
  <p>"Understatement of the night, people!" Amity said.</p>
  <p>"Okay, we can get through this, no problem," Luz said, doing the best job she could not to fall into a panic. "Okay, Eda, you and Lilith stay here and set up some defenses: draw up a bunch of glyphs, pull out the weapons, get Hooty to stop playing with ants, whatever! Amity and I will go out into the woods to look for King in case he just got lost. Or, if he did get captured like we're all not trying to think about, so we can spring him and prevent a Mexican standoff-type deal."</p>
  <p>"What's a—"</p>
  <p>"Nevermind, let's save my Boo-Boo Buddy!" Luz grabbed Amity's hand and ran out of the Owl House with her in tow.</p>
  <p>"So, I guess we're preparing for war, then," Eda said.</p>
  <p>"It would appear so," Lilith said. "I suppose it would be good to call for a ceasefire. Temporarily, of course. Hopefully, we'll be able to beat them back fast enough for us to continue the Swindle and for me to showcase my superiority over you."</p>
  <p>"Likewise, except with me lording over your pathetic state, of course."</p>
  <p>"You wish, you infernal troglodyte."</p>
  <p>"Says you, you whatever is worse than that."</p>
  <hr/>
  <p>After several more barbs were traded between Eda and Lilith, they got to work preparing for the eventual battle. Eda pulled all of her good swords, maces, and miniature trebuchets out of storage, Lilith drew up glyphs for the two of them to use, either as weapons or as traps spread around the house, and even though they got hurt in the process, they got Hooty to stop messing around with ants and focus up. As midnight inched closer and closer to reality, Eda and Lilith stood out on the balcony, waiting for trouble to come to them.</p>
  <p>Waiting to punish the people who ruined their Swindle.</p>
  <p>"We couldn't find him!" As they stood guard for the oncoming attack, Luz jumped up to the balcony stop a pillar of ice. "Amity and I looked everywhere for King, but we couldn't find him! What if the Emperor's Coven really did take him? What if King develops Stockholm syndrome or something? What do we do if that happens?"</p>
  <p>"Then we give him a pill to eat, or whatever you use to cure that," Lilith said. "What is that, by the way?"</p>
  <p>"Argh, it'll take too long to explain!" Luz was still freaking out, so Eda did the only sensible thing she could think of and snapped her suspenders against her chest. "Okay, I think I calmed down a little. Stinging pain is good for that, apparently."</p>
  <p>"I certainly hope so," Eda said. "Don't worry, kid, we're all gonna get through this, especially King. A scrappy guy like that can handle a bunch of bozos like these without breaking a sweat."</p>
  <p>"Well, maybe a <em>bit </em>of a sweat," Lilith said.</p>
  <p>"In what world are you helping?"</p>
  <p>"Fair enough. Let's just all try and remain focused."</p>
  <p>"Right," Luz said. "We're gonna beat up all those guys who are coming after us, then we'll rescue King and we'll all celebrate the end of the Samhain Festival in style, however people do that. Maybe with food, some music, a little Grudgby, whatever."</p>
  <p>"That's right, just focus on the positives and—" Eda stopped herself short as the entirety of Luz's statement sunk in. "Grudgby? To celebrate the Samhain Festival?"</p>
  <p>"Yeah, I mean, why not?"</p>
  <p>"Didn't you say this reminded you of a human holiday where people dress up in racist costumes? Where would a sport fit into that culture?" Lilith asked, looking as perplexed as Eda.</p>
  <p>"I don't know, but it could still be fun," Luz said, the smile on her face growing wider by the second. "We've got plenty of space for it, so all we need is a good ball, <em>right</em>?" Eda didn't know what Luz was getting at, but she didn't like it, regardless. "I said, all we need is a good ball, <em>right</em>?" With that said, now all Eda was feeling was confusion. "Amity, that was your signal!"</p>
  <p>"Sorry, hold on!" As Eda sunk further into confusion, a giant Abomination arm shot up outside the balcony, and standing in the palm of its hand was a very smug-looking Amity. Eda's eyes almost jumped out of her skull, both literally and figuratively, when she saw Amity holding what certainly had to be the source of the smugness.</p>
  <p>""The championship Grudgby ball!"" Eda and Lilith cried out in unison.</p>
  <p>"Yep. With my mom's bloodstain of authenticity," Amity said, jumping off the arm and onto the balcony. "So gross, but what this ball represents outweighs all of that."</p>
  <p>"And do you know what it represents? A couple of kids showing their teachers a thing or two by screwing them over hard!" Luz said, her smile now clearly one of a smugness matching Amity's.</p>
  <p>"Title of <em>our </em>sex tape!"</p>
  <p>"Oh, Amity, no."</p>
  <p>"Yeah, regretted it as soon as I said it. The point is, we just won. B! Did I do that right?"</p>
  <p>"Yeah, that was perfect!" These were the people who somehow managed to outsmart Eda; Lilith she understood, but her getting beaten seemed inconceivable.</p>
  <p>All in all, there needed to be a good explanation for it all.</p>
</div>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0005"><h2>5. The Swindle Settles</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Going into the Samhain Swindle, Luz knew that her eventual victory would feel positively ecstatic, but actually living through it felt better than anything she could have possibly imagined; here she thought that Amity praising her for successfully boiling an egg would be the highlight of her life, but outplaying Eda and Lilith just barely edged that out.</p><p>"I am so confused. What is happening?" Lilith asked.</p><p>"What's happening, dear sister, is the culmination of<em> my </em>master plan," Eda said, stepping over to Luz and Amity's side without skipping a beat. "You thought that I was the only one you had to contend with, but Luz was doing my dirty work the entire time—"</p><p>"Wrong!" Luz cut in while shoving Eda away from her. "Wrong, wrong, that's a bunch of lies, now get back over there!" Eda mumbled something unintelligible before doing just that.</p><p>"Seriously, Edalyn, take your defeat with at least a little bit of grace," Lilith said. Luz almost considered feeling a little bit of respect for her until she stepped over to Amity with a smug look on her face. "After all, Amity was clearly the brains of this operation, and as her teacher, her victories are my victories, which means I am still the reigning—"</p><p>"No, shut up! Get back there with the other loser!" Amity interjected, shoving Lilith until she begrudgingly did just that. "You do <em> not </em> get to take credit for this. You had your chance to let me help you with Swindles, but you never even thought about letting me, so you reap what you sow."</p><p>"But you've never cared about not getting to help with the Swindle."</p><p>"I have<em> always </em> cared, you colossal moron! You've just been too selfish and oblivious to notice!" </p><p>"That seems rather unlikely." Lilith honestly believed the words that she was saying. Luz couldn't even find camaraderie in Eda rolling her eyes at that, considering that she was no better with how easily she dismissed her earlier.</p><p>"And by the way, despite what you might think, this whole plan was Luz's brainchild, so bow before <em> her </em> might, you jerks!"</p><p>"You don't have to bow if you don't want to, but I guess I wouldn't object to it," Luz said.</p><p>"Yeah, well, I'm not doing that, mostly because I don't believe you," Eda said. "No offense, kid, but how could you have possibly set up some super intricate plan to outsmart us in just a single day?"</p><p>"I couldn't, which is why I didn't." Eda and Lilith looked as confused as she expected them to look. "Lilith, could you please tell the class what got us talking about the Samhain Swindle, to begin with?"</p><p>"Come on, you were there, Luz. You just finished satisfying Amity's nerd lust, I still wish I hadn't seen all of that, and then you asked me if I had any special traditions for the… festival." Lilith's eyes widened as the reality of the situation sunk in. "You knew about the Swindle beforehand, didn't you?"</p><p>"Correctamundo! The exact second October rolled around, Amity started going on and on about how she hated this month because you, the jerk face that you are, never let her help with the Swindle. I couldn't stand that, so I spent this whole month planning out a Swindle where we could wipe the floor with you, and we succeeded."</p><p>"That's sweet and all, but why'd I get dragged into this?" Eda asked.</p><p>"Because you're no better than Lilith."</p><p>"Take that back, or I'll kill you where you stand."</p><p>"See? That's what we're talking about; you<em> both </em> suck," Amity said. "Hell, Luz, the kind little angel she is, even gave you a couple of chances to tag along with us back when you first challenged Lilith; she was more than willing to mess up our plans if you showed even a little bit of kindness, but you were only thinking about yourself, so you only have yourself to blame for this!"</p><p>"I mean, I can also blame you two for doing this at all," Eda said. There was just no reasoning with some people, it seemed.</p><p>"Okay, enough of this. Just explain how this all went down so we can be done with this," Lilith said.</p><p>"Right, but I'm doing it because<em> I </em>want to," Luz said. "Like you already sussed out, this all started when I got you to talk about the Swindle you used to do with the Emperor's Coven. I knew that Eda would laugh at the idea of you being able to accomplish anything to the point that you'd want to prove her wrong, and with our own Swindle officially underway, everything else could fall into place."</p><p>"That's what I'm still having trouble understanding. How could you two have coordinated everything so well while you were at the dance?"</p><p>"Because we weren't at the dance. We actually spent the whole night in the woods, and I've got death cicada corpses to prove it," Amity said, throwing said corpses out of her pockets like confetti. Very fun to watch, especially since they weren't trying to kill them on account of being dead.</p><p>"But you posted a picture of you two having fun at the dance," Eda said.</p><p>"Nothing but a clever ruse, courtesy of a custom background filter," Luz said. "We needed to make sure you'd keep thinking we were having a fun time at the dance instead of spending hours rooting around in filth. Totally worth it, don't try and downplay our victory."</p><p>"I'm not."</p><p>"Good, because you can't, especially with how easily you fell for the lie about the fireworks," Amity said.</p><p>"I <em> knew </em> something was up with that! There <em> are </em> no fireworks for the Samhain Festival!" Lilith said.</p><p>"Yep, and just like Luz and I thought, you were too focused on winning to question it, and Eda was too drunk to be able to think about it. Should have saved that apple blood for drowning your sorrows, Eda."</p><p>"Like I don't have plenty more where that came from," Eda said, pulling a bottle of apple blood out of her hair.</p><p>"Nope, not right now!" Luz said as she took the bottle away from her. "Can't have you getting so drunk that you're not able to take this all in. Also, maybe you've had enough for one night."</p><p>"It's past midnight, so it's a new day, little miss smart-ass." Luz elected to ignore that.</p><p>"Okay, getting back on track, Amity and I used magic to fake a firework explosion outside of the Owl House to knock the Grudgby ball out of your hair, which is where we knew it would be because of course, it would be there. After we let Crowley take the ball from Eda, we let the two of you tire yourselves out against Hooty a little more before going on to the next phase of the plan."</p><p>"Okay, I get how that firework thing worked on me, but how did you trick Lily? She never uses Penstagram, and there's no way Amity would have gone out of her way to tell her about anything."</p><p>"I wasn't tricked in any regard," Lilith said. "I came up with my plan as soon as King told me about the fireworks and—Wait a damn minute."</p><p>"That's right. There's one more player in all of this you didn't account for, and his name is—"</p><p>"Me!" Out from the wrist of Amity's Abomination arm popped out King, his body covered in chocolate stains and Abomination goo. It was cute, but it would have been cuter if he had gotten his line right. </p><p>"King? You're part of this?" Eda asked.</p><p>"You bet your nips I am, skidmark," King said. "That's right, ladies. This whole time, I was the true mastermind behind everything, and here's how it all went down—"</p><p>"Gonna stop you right there, King," Amity cut in. "You did, like, two things that you only understood because Luz and I had to keep explaining them to you, and that actually almost messed us up."</p><p>"Don't tell <em> them </em>that!"</p><p>"Can someone tell us why King was even helping you?"</p><p>"Maybe I wanted a piece of the action, too. You ever think of that?"</p><p>"We gave him a bunch of chocolate as a bribe," Luz said.</p><p>"It can be two things!"</p><p>"It clearly wasn't, though," Eda said.</p><p>"Yeah, it was just the chocolate," Luz said, ignoring King's protests. "When Lilith was getting tossed around by Hooty, I slipped back inside and bribed King with a ton of sweets to help us out a little. The first thing he did was tell Lilith about the fireworks so she would get the idea to have Crowley stalk Eda's bedroom."</p><p>"After that, we had him pretend to go into an alliance with Eda to take the ball back from Lilith, but that was all part of the plan," Amity said. "Hooty getting attacked earlier? That was me with my Abomination. I needed to create the distraction Eda was looking for to make her think that her plan would work."</p><p>"I should have known," Lilith said. "Not only did those pieces of goo that were on Hooty's disgusting body looked like Abomination resin, but for some reason, Amity, you're the only one who's able to hurt Hooty, despite not having the strength and skill level of people who have failed to do so. Almost as if it were a gag in some sort of children's program."</p><p>"Ease up, Lilith, that's not the kind of joke we're doing today," Luz said. "Anyway, with King having faked his alliance with Eda and Lilith tricked into going out of the house, the plan could continue. King really did take the Grudgby ball from Lilith, but rather than go wait where you told him to wait, he met up with us in the woods where we swapped him out for his cute little body double."</p><p>"Right, that slippery bastard who masqueraded as him," Eda said.</p><p>"His name's Arlo; Emira got him as a birthday present from Viney, and he's way more adorable than you're giving him credit for," Amity said. "By the way, I need him back by sunrise because Emira was very clear that if anything happened to him, she would kill everyone in our house and then herself."</p><p>"Very violent expression of love. I like it," King said.</p><p>“Arlo not being King and just bringing you a normal Grudgby ball would definitely try your patience to the point where you’d just try and beat the ball out of Lilith, and once you reached that stage, we could go into the final phase of our plan.”</p><p>“The final phase being fully convincing you that our lives were in danger so Amity and I could go get the ball from King and let you both run out the clock, thus eliminating any chance of this all backfiring at the last second,” Luz said. “And that, of course, brings us to this moment, where a month of hard work and planning finally pays off. Well, unless you count when Amity and I made out because of how proud of me she was for planning out so much stuff; that was pretty great, too.”</p><p>“Luz.”</p><p>“Yep, recapped a little too much there, I can see that. The point is, we win. You both thought you were hot stuff, but you couldn’t do anything to stop us, and you know why?” Luz and Amity flourished their arms, pointed at both Eda and Lilith, and in perfect unison, said, “Ya boring!” Eda and Lilith didn’t fall to their knees underneath the weight of the declaration, so as it stood, there was only one hiccup in Luz’s plan so far.</p><p>However, Eda initiating a slow clap that didn’t sound the least bit sarcastic made her feel better about herself.</p><p>“Bravo, you two, bravo,” Eda said. “Didn’t think you had it in you, so nice job proving me wrong.”</p><p>“As much as I hate to both say something like this and agree with Edalyn, I must admit that you had me completely and thoroughly beat,” Lilith said. “It looks like I underestimated you, Luz, and it looks like I have long since underestimated you, Amity.”</p><p>“Damn right,” Amity said.</p><p>“Aw, I love it when you act all fierce and stuff,” Luz said, making Amity blush the way she liked to see her blush. “Now, then, I believe that Lilith said something about there being a trophy for the winner, so…”</p><hr/><p>““All hail Luz and Amity, the Ultimate Witches/Geniuses,”” was what Eda and Lilith said when they eventually produced a trophy for the two of them, a gold figure of the incendiary being Aillen setting a hill ablaze while playing a harp, a scene that Amity assured her made sense in context. It was cool to look at it, and the entirety of the Owl House was celebrating with a late-night party, so Luz didn’t see the point in pressing the matter further.</p><p>“So Amity’s going to have custody of the trophy first, feel like that’d make her happy, but where do you think I should put it once it’s my turn?” Luz asked as season-appropriate music sounded through the Owl House.</p><p>“You should build a big pedestal and put it up right here in the living room. That’ll really rub it in their faces every day,” King said as he stuffed his mouth with the various treats everyone had put out for eating.</p><p>“I’m building a pedestal, so you can just use mine when it’s your turn,” Amity said while cuddling with Arlo on the couch.</p><p>“You know, you two shouldn’t get too comfortable with your little win here,” Eda said. “You only pulled it off because Lily and I didn’t know you were playing, but now that I know you want in on it, you won’t be able to stop me next year.”</p><p>“More importantly, you won’t be able to stop <em> me </em>, because if anyone deserves to take that trophy out of your grubby little hands, it’s me,” Lily said.</p><p>“Yeah, as if we won’t just run it back again and make you two look even more worthless than you already are,” Amity said, Arlo barking in what Luz assumed to be agreement. </p><p>“Who knows? Maybe <em> I’ll </em>win next year and show you all up!” King said. The music was the only sound to be heard for a few moments before everyone started laughing at King’s statement. “Oh, go to hell, all of you.”</p><p>“Maybe later. For now, this B needs to put a C in her cute little A,” Luz said with a smile. For some reason, Eda and Lilith both looked at her with utter contempt and disgust.</p><p>“Luz, why would you say that? What the hell is wrong with you?” Eda asked.</p><p>“Seriously, we’re having a good night, and you have to go and ruin it with filth,” Lilith said.</p><p>“This ‘Babe’ needs to put a ‘Cupcake’ in her cute little ‘Amity’,” Luz said with a bit of hesitation.</p><p>““Oh,”” Eda and Lilith said in unison. </p><p>“Wait, what did you think I meant?”</p><p>“Yeah, what did you think she meant?” Amity asked.</p><p>“Nothing, absolutely nothing,” Lilith said. “Like I said, we’re having a good night, so—”</p><p>“We thought you were saying, ‘This ‘B****’ needs to put a ‘C***’ in her cute little’ A**’,” was what Hooty said the second he popped into the room. In an instant, both Luz and Amity had looks of utter contempt and disgust that outmatched Eda and Lilith’s.</p><p>“Oh my God! What the hell is wrong with you people?” Luz asked.</p><p>“Seriously, we’re having a good night, and you have to go and ruin it with filth! And in front of Arlo!” Amity said, covering up Arlo’s ears to protect his innocence.</p><p>“Like, how would that even work with us? How?”</p><p>“I think Eda has something for that lying around here,” King said.</p><p>“Not helping, King!” Eda said. Exchanges of that nature carried forth for quite a while until, at some point, everyone forgot the exact nature of their fight, only the stinging embarrassment of it all.</p><p>And thus ended the first-ever Samhain Swindle of the Owl House.   </p>
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